Author: grahamh

Jonathan Jones writes in today’s Guardian on-line:  “If One & Other is an image of British democratic life in our time, it is a pessimistic one….Warhol was not celebrating modern life when he said everyone would be famous for 15 minutes: he was delivering a cynical prophesy of a diffuse, shiftless world…For me, this is a monument to that prophesy’s fulfillment. When you see it from across the square, the work resembles one of Gormley’s casts of the isolated human figure, which strode across the London skyline in 2007. Sirens wail, echoing around the tiny living statue.”

Anyone reading this blog will know that I’ve written about One & Other before.  But this article is a thoughtful reconsideration of Gormley’s strange master-work, and echoes themes I have touched on here.  But I could not better Jones’s description of the challenge of public art which highlights “the eerie distance between the intimacy of standing in the crowd and the vast living history painting” which is the world around us.

Some people have asked me whether I am going to write a ‘What is David Cameron reading?’ piece, following last week’s blog prior to the Labour Party Conference – see the post below on Gordon Brown and poetry.

Not sure about Cameron, but Michael Gove – the shadow Education Secretary – is clearly a very well-read guy. He gave a recent speech to the Qulliam Foundation, on the theme of Britishness, in which he quoted – among various others – T.S. Eliot.

Eliot’s famous dictum on Culture (Notes Towards a Definition of Culture) makes the case for a broad definition of culture, in which “a constellation of cultures, the constituents of which, benefiting each other, benefit the whole”.  This is an eloquent and powerful – and, indeed, written in 1948, remarkably prescient – assessment of the emergence of a multi-cultural British society.

But it is also a little too simplistic and naive. Part of acknowledging the existence and benefits of a ‘constellation’ is that the different cultures may well not happily co-exist.  A multi-cultural society is often not at ease with itself, but is one in which different cultures stuggle to articulate their differences and complementarities.  Take a look, for example, at The Samosa. This project is not about how marvellously we all co-exist, but how identity is often under threat, and needs to be articulated. Identity is always in development.

The same is true of organisations going through change.  Many senior managers want calm and co-existence – constellations happily existing side-by-side.  But innovative managers will seek to disrupt such inertia, and will cherish the dynamism of difference.  The trick in running a successful and dynamic organisation is to learn how to nurture and support new thinking, sometimes disruptive thinking and ideas – it’s here that competitive advantage is gained.

But I’m not sure that David Cameron would necessarily agree….

One and Other is …”a sad, feeble, ineffectual excuse for a public sculpture”.
Oh dear. Someone is not happy (despite my views – see below).
Have a look at this.

What do you think?

As I’m writing this it’s raining. Actually, it’s pouring. And the poor guy who is just being lifted onto the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square is going to get very wet (although, to be fair, he’s brought an umbrella with him).
To anyone not familiar with this extraordinary happening (I’m not sure what other word to use) should either head down to Traflagar Square or – given the weather! – log onto: www.oneandother.co.uk

It says a great deal about the British sense of self-awareness and openness.  This is an open, public, space which is being celebrated as a piece of art – or:  a piece of art being celebrated as a public, open space.  People, Londoners, whoever they are, are ferried onto the Plinth – prized for major pieces of public art.  (The other three plinths have statues of major military figures.)  A willingness to perform in front of crowds (not today, obviously), to be pilloried, laughed at, or just gawped-at.  A diversity and openness which is not forced or false.  Like the childish innocence of dancing or drawing without any concern of one’s audience.

It’s difficult to think of a more conventional cultural equivalent or offering.

Now that green shoots are being seen everywhere, what happened to the plans for the arts and creative sector to lead us out of recession?

By all accounts, the New Deal of the Mind is still going strong – with plenty of supporters across the subsidised sector; and, of course, CCS will still find time to publish pieces about the role of culture and creativity after the crunch. But where are the new initiatives? Whatever happened to the plans by Blears and Burnham to give vacant shops to artists? Or Purnell’s plans for a creative workforce?

Some of the plans may well have got underway, but I haven’t heard about arts or creative groups benefitting. Where are the Arts Council in all this? Or the RDAs? (Whatever happened to Creative London?)

The attached paper sets out some simple, practical, ideas which could be got off the ground soon. Anyone interested?

Understanding the conflict and tension between the ‘instrumental’ and ‘intrinsic’ value of culture is dealt with elsewhere in this blog. John Berger had this extraordinary ability to combine learned insight with the instinctive understanding of an artist.
He had been an artist of course, giving up in the early ’50s, before taking up a career as a writer and critic. His early pieces for New Stateman see him grappling with the challenge of social connectivity – which he looked for in art, and which he attempted to convey in his own writing – and an understanding of the artistic value inherent in the gesture of the brushstroke.
Some of the essays, collected in ‘Permanent Red’, achieve that balance; many do not.
It was when he turned to novel-writing – or a kind of ‘novel’ and a kind of ‘writing’ – that his work began to mature.
His two greatest works in my view are ‘And our faces, my heart….‘, and ‘A Fortunate Man‘. The former is an extraordinary, poetic, evocation of human passion and the love of art. The second simply follows the life of a country doctor – through description, reflection, occasional didacticism, and photographs. Published in 1967, it is a clear precursor to the work for the Into Their Labours series and other books, for which he is better known, written 20 and more years later.

He is one of the greatest writers on culture, for his ability to engage with and articulate the political and emotional value of culture.

The challenge of understanding the non-monetary value of culture is explored in some depth in the essay referred to in an earlier post. This is a theme now being taken up by the AHRC, among others.

For a different perspective on non-market values, this short essay is a delightful reflection from a highly-recommended website.